So, I stumbled upon tweets and a blog post yesterday where Epic and SoarTech were celebrating their new partnership.
My initial reaction was disbelief, disappointment and disgust. I just don’t understand how a company (or person) can be proud of helping this kind of industry to perfect its “skills”.
Sure, Epic is a company after all. They need to make money. But somehow i thought, Epic would have certain standards - or ethics - and therefore wouldn’t go this far. Apparently I was too naive.
For the people behind Epic I really hope, that they, personally, are fully aware, what their engine will be used for by the military because they now play an active role in this “game”.
Every user may draw her/his own conclusions, of course.
Many companies have relations with the military sector, without us realising it. In The Netherlands many banks and investment companies have money invested in scary industries. Many economies are entangled with it.
Hell, we might even say: without the military/defense industry our economie would crumble…
Having done government training using the Unreal Engine, I think anything to make Government licensing easier is . Government licensing is a nightmare. Better training means more lives saved, not killed.
Don’t see the problem tbh, I know someone who went to a company who made military simulations after Pandemic Studios was closed by EA ( studio - RIP). It only opens doors for people with our kind of skills in the long run, and ofc allows further engine improvements.
Someone would have taken up the role anyway. The only difference is that the trainees will be able to admire nice visuals instead
Not sure if I got your point here.
Do you say, military staff using Unreal to train (essentially for combat) is the same as gamers playing FPS games?
Well, I think there actually is a big difference.
Military forces will apply their training on battle field and necessarily might kill people for real. I doubt, that this applies to the vast majority of gamers playing ego shooters.
Technological and scientific advances. Improving more efficient killing methods. Life imitating art!!! Cool.
Life’s just another usual game with little originality, with only one life and two distant brother in opposite sides, satisfying the most primitive desire: “More money for his masters.”
better epic than companies from a military sector, which would use money for even more stuff in military sector.
also, your opinion doesn’t matter, literally, it doesn’t matter.
If you wanted to avoid companies that have any sort of collaboration with the military, your software setup will look quite…small. You couldnt even use Google in any form (see i.e. Boston Dynamics).
Please note that i am not a general supporter of military actions in any way; But from a neutral point of view:
The good thing about military is that it often drives technology. GPS wouldnt exist without military as an example. Many inventions were originally made for the military and used for public stuff.
Your argument might sound logical, but is a myth in my opinion.
If your argument would be true, we shouldn’t have any “collateral damages” by now, as the military has constantly “improved” its training (and weapons) over the last years, decades and centuries.
We get it, you are anti military. Please show your disgust in this partnership by switching to a different engine, because to continue to use it is to support things you do not like or believe in, that is called hypocrisy. BYE.
Weapons development outpaces training to use said weapons dramatically.
There are many, many, many improvements still needed to prevent collateral damage. The fact that we don’t have more collateral damage based on what the military currently uses is amazing. In high pressure situations where decisions must be made quickly with limited intel, bad things will happen. Yes, training is constantly being improved, but it continues to need improvement. Unreal Engine isn’t a weapon, and I don’t support weapon development for weapon development’s sake, but I fully support any improvements in training for said weapons and intelligence.
Knowing the difference between a hostile environment and a civilian environment is becoming harder and harder the more military ordinance becomes accessible and that is a real shame, but being able to put soldiers on the ground through more training allows them to make smarter decisions and be less likely to treat a civilian environment as a hostile one. Sometimes the only difference is literally how a barrel housing a fire is constructed, whether its set up to cook food or for drugs, such as barrel height and temperature. A lot of current military training sims lack the graphical fidelity to be able to convey this, so this valuable information goes unused in the field, because this information ends up as a footnote of some textbook instead of any required simulation. Tools like Unreal Engine allow for better training in being able to recognize these signs in different environments, in different times of day, and quickly allow easy to understand interactive comparisons with a few simple button clicks.
Using Unreal Engine or any game engine to train how to use handheld weapons is an idea I’m less keen to, but the best training for handheld weapons has always been give that weapon to a soldier, or at least a dummy version of one. Playing an ‘FPS’ for the sake of shooting people isn’t really training, and that training is often done in real life using the MILES or other similar systems. Training for things like artillery fire and bigger weapons also generally happens in the field, which anyone living near a large army base can attest to as you’ll wake up to the shaking to the explosions of various ‘war games’ or seeing the sky illuminated by flares. Yes, some weapon systems make use of digital training, but the overwhelming majority of digital training goes into situation awareness and intelligence, both key elements to reducing collateral damage. If we used today’s weapons but limit military training to its state just a decade ago, there would be significantly increased collateral damage. Adding roadblocks to training will only make combat situations worse, not better.
no, thats a lie
Opinion is a wondeful thing, everybody has one, everybody think their opinion is “the right way” and everybody think their opinion does or should matter for other people. All those statements are lie. There are billion people over the internet, all of them have the opinion, all of them express their opinion and all their exspressions are forgoten.
What is matter is what the people do with their opinion, action is the thing which makes opinion the real player in this world. And your action is the forum post, poorly written, poorly argummented infantile post, which has ZERO established points in it, besides the humanism(questionable).
You dont have any reasonable tools to make epic drop their military contracts, no matter what you do over the internet thats not gonna change, because your opinion on this situation is “the right way” only for you.
At some point, when you would grow up (grow up != become older) you would understand, the radical position in this world dosnt work, you cannot change stuff, you cannot change people mindset by saying them “the right way”, but you can make them change it by themself, by showing them another ways, on practice.
Radicalism dosnt work. If your REALLY want to change something, epic was generous enough to give you the tool. Make game, make a lot of games, proove you way, your life statements in those games, if you are not cappable of those, go to the answerhub and help other people to make the game, thats the part of humanism which you can bring into this cruel world of capitalism.
But now, everything what i see here, in this topic, can be described by one image -
thats my poor english skills, my “philosophical” posts always endup sound like a yoda
point is, since those money (for some project) going to the epic, which is civil game engine company, those money would(probably) be spend on the game engine which is civil sector. But if those money would be paid to the complany, which is main idea is to make weapons, they would spend them to become better in making weapons.
I agree that such idea is a myth imposed and motivated by an irrational tendence.
Is education, normal peoples, citizens, scientists, academics, artists, teachers, students, most civilians, people with a dream, an idea from various nations that develops the technology advance. No generals and mindless soldiers in a battle front playing shooting and earning bravery and obedience badges.
Unfortunately the human people lives in a world in which the great intelligence (perhaps, in all this galaxy) is governed by something as abstract as an one dollar note, and the luminaries are forced selling themselves to mindless creatures.
